Neo-post-post-rock group To Hëll With The Dåmned! Said The Sætting Sün Over The Bättlefield Stårk! released its new eleven-disc album Monday to universal disapproval. Not one positive review has come from anyone anywhere, no matter how many drugs they were on at the time.
Marmaduke is a comic that is as old as my parents. It’s been drawn by the same fellow, one Brad Anderson, since 1954, and since the fateful day of its creation Marmaduke has served as a daily reminder that you don’t have to be funny or talented to be syndicated in newspapers nationwide.
I once read the entire Marmaduke comic described succinctly as “The big dog is on something you want.” I think there’s an even simpler explanation: the cartoonist is not funny at all.
This summer I am working for a party and tent rental company. I usually get assigned to tasks in the warehouse, but occasionally I’m sent out to drop off or pick up rental equipment. I seem to come across a more diverse range of smelly things and places while out on the road, but the warehouse has its fair share of odors as well.
Today I tried making a ziggurat out of beef. The number of cows required for this undertaking cost an arm and a leg, which I supplied happily from my eldest daughter. Anu was pleased with my sacrifice, and the rains came, and the rains caused the cow-keeper to go inside, allowing me to steal his cows. Out of these, I built the ziggurat I mentioned before. It was stinky and did not stand well, and had more maggots than I am used to seeing in a house of the Gods. I wailed at the altar of Ki for several hours to make up for whatever failure it was that she was angry about. However, since the altar I wailed at was the one I had just built, the efficacy of my prayers is somewhat in doubt.
The cowherd was annoyed as well, mostly because I left a rotting ziggurat in his field.
The height of Yooper fashion, and the first result in Google.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the Scandinavia of America: cold, out-of-the-way, and pointless. It’s like the Finnish translation of Appalachia. Somewhere along the line, someone in the U.P. thought it would be a good idea to refer to themselves as a “Yooper” (U.P.-er), and ever since, anyone with any sense has avoided it.
I’m sorry, but I couldn’t save your husband.
I WAS BUSY WATCHING MY TESTICLES DESCEND.
Few television shows directly cause domestic abuse. It is rare to find one that actually forces anyone to clock the nearest person in a fit of pure rage. But there is some evidence that television does cause violence.
In the course of researching this article, my roommate was hospitalized for more wounds than I can count. He was suffering from a fractured collarbone, a split pelvis, a dislocated bladder, and an extra spinal cord. (For the life of me I can’t remember where I got that extra spinal cord.) And then he made the mistake to have Dougie Howser on when I came to visit his ward. God rest his soul… but I believe my point was, Dougie Howser makes you want to kill.
In a speech congratulating Obama for his victory, Bush made a surprising revelation. “And as the current President of this country, I look forward to passing the torch on to Mr. Obama. …NOT!” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m not even President! Al Gore is. You guys really didn’t figure that out after eight years? What a bunch of rubes.”
Perhaps it’s the generally unfriendly climate in Pittsburgh, or maybe the price of energy is to blame, or it could be that the unfettered access to information that we enjoy in the modern age has dampened people’s willingness to go and see something when they can just read about it online. Whatever the cause may be, the fact remains: neither the massive extra-terrestrial spacecraft that crash landed in the center of Pittsburgh last Thursday, nor the strange humanoid beings who inexplicably emerged from the wreckage unharmed, have managed to bring in the flocks of tourists that the city was expecting.
Here’s a pet peeve of mine that I think all of us can agree is quite annoying. There’s a common type of person whom all of us have met at one point or another. Sometimes, he’s your history professor in college. Sometimes, he’s the strange neighbor down the street that is completely oblivious to the fact that no one likes him and who has managed to somehow identify you, of all people, as his chum. Heaven forbid this type of person is actually a member of your immediate family. He’s somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty to forty years of age, wears sweater vests and golf socks, is well versed in Shakespeare and philosophy, and, not least of all, has been boasting a glistening bald patch in the back of his head since he was twenty-three. This person (here it comes) OVEREMPHASIZES THE “H” IN EVERYTHING HE SAYS. “WHHHHHHy, HHHHHHow are you doing today?” he might say. “Excuse me, wHHHHHat was that you said? HHHHHHalitosis? Me?”
I hate it… I mean I REALLY hate it when people have stupid pet peeves. They come up to me, disgruntled and afluster with aggravation. I ask: “What’s wrong?” and they answer: “You know what I really hate?” I say: “What do you really hate?” Then they say something extremely retarded, something hardly worth calling attention to at all, something to which NOBODY CAN RELATE!
“I hate peeing in other peoples’ pee,” said one of my friends one night.
There is this category of people I like to call “waver-onners.” You’ve all encountered them before. They’re the people who wave you on. I despise these people. They always go out of their way to inconvenience themselves so that they can look at you through their tinted windshield with some sort of faggoty little grin and wave you on. “Go ahead! I stopped for you,” they’re indicating, and nine times out of ten, I think to them: “Why, you ass clown? I waited here for several seconds so that YOU could go ahead!”
About half our ads are for webcomics so abysmal, they make Minimum Security look like Calvin and Hobbes. I always browse through our Project Wonderful advertisers’ sites to see if I find any gems, which are exceptionally rare (see also: Grade D but Edible, Buttersafe). I’ve only found two webcomics I’ve really enjoyed among dozens that have bought our advertising. That says a lot about how many people simply do not belong in that business. Some of these unremarkable strips are solidly “pretty good”, but their potential is wasted by either a bad partnership or a lack of a badly-needed partnership; some are just in all ways conventional, been-done, and uninteresting. There is nothing memorable to distinguish 97% of all webcomics. Trust me: StudKickass is different. StudKickass is one of the most memorable strips I’ve ever seen… but I do not wish this experience even on my worst enemies.
On a day in the distant past, two boring people met in a park. They stared at each other, and an uncomfortable silence ensued. “Wouldn’t I be less boring,” each thought to themselves, “if I could engage this other gentleman in a cheery conversation about a canine’s crotch-sniffing habits?” And so, after an extremely long silence, they parted ways and went to pet stores, in order to buy something to talk about. But they met with less success than an Ethiopian in a tanning bed. The plan did not make them more interesting. It only made them more noisy.
Donkey Kong has a very simple premise: your giant monkey pet has abducted your girlfriend Pauline and climbed to the top of the worst construction site in existence. You, “Jumpman”, a very slow-walking and perishable carpenter, must make your way to the top of the construction site and rescue Pauline whilst Donkey Kong rolls barrels and other crap at you.
